Fulvio Grimaldi is the legendary Italian (and former BBC) journalist and filmmaker who shot and smuggled out video footage of the Bloody Sunday massacre from under the noses of the British army almost forty years ago. He champions a style of journalism that is passionate, that does not shy away from the graphic horror of war, and that resists the pretence of neutrality in times of barbarism. As he put it after Bloody Sunday: “…impartiality didn’t even cross our minds… we belonged to the running and screaming and falling and dying”. He has belonged to them ever since.

Now 73, he has just returned from Libya where he was making his latest film, about NATO’s neo-colonial ‘revolution’ in Libya. I caught up with him in Bristol where he was attending the film’s English premiere.

I began by asking Grimaldi how closely his recent trips to Libya matched the impression given in the mainstream media:

“Not in the least. I personally visited areas around Tripoli where Gheddafi had allegedly “bombed his own people”, but not a bomb had fallen before Nato started its attacks. And this was confirmed by Russian spy satellites. Wherever I went – only in the company of other Fact Finding officials, talking freely to people of my choice, and stopping wherever I wished – I came across multitudes of young and old, men and women, who declared themselves committed to Gheddafi. They are the people who withstood a 7 month war by 27 military powers who had promised a two-week victory, those who defended Tripoli for over a week, those who today hold out in Sirte, Bani Walid, Sabha, Kufra and in 75% of the still free national territory – against genocidal bombings, special Nato troops and mercenaries.”

This is clearly not the picture we have come to expect from the media – the play-school image of a ‘people united against a dictator’. To what does Grimaldi attribute such high levels of support for Gheddafi?: “The UN explains it in its 2010 report: Libya was the top country in Africa on their Index of Human Development: for life expectancy, education, health, housing, children, the elderly, women. Free schools and hospitals, free housing, free drinking water for everybody, modern infrastructure, the oil revenue distributed to the people – and independence and dignity.” This was what Gheddafi represented to many – and NATO’s bombing only seemed to harden these attitudes: “thousands of civilians murdered by bombs, missiles, Western terrorists and mercenary throat-cutters. What does one think the wanton destruction of all infrastructure, hospitals, schools, factories, waterpipes, homes, may have produced in the attitude of 6 million Libyans and 2 million well-treated, dignified migrant workers?”

These migrant workers have been consistently demonised as “African mercenaries” – or at best, “alleged African mercenaries” – in the Western press from even before the war started, and this wilful disinformation has continued even after an Amnesty International report comprehensively demolished the claim in July. The lie has served to obscure and justify the racial killings that have characterising the rebellion since its outbreak. I asked Grimaldi about these murders and about their willful misrepresentation: “Racism is one of the most powerful weapons in the imperialist arsenal of genocide and regime-change. The thousands of black Libyans and Africans tortured, executed and dismembered by the “rebels” testify to this. There is abundant visual and testimonial evidence for it, even in my film. As to the main-stream media and their passive followers on the left, the process of monopolisation that has taken place over the past years among publishers and networks, identifies the interests of the warmongers with that of their media. The individual journalist has the choice between complying with the agenda of his employer and its psy-op consultants, and unemployment.”

Grimaldi is unsurprised by the recent Wikileaks revelation that the Director-General of Al-Jazeera was involved in what he called the “criminal manipulation of information during the whole Libyan crisis”. After all, “Al Jazeera was the main source for war correspondents who sat with the mixed gang of Al Qaeda-Gheddafi renegades while they proceeded to roast blacks and talk nonsense about Gheddafi and non existent rebel-advances.”

Finally, I asked Grimaldi about NATO’s real aims in this war. He is much clearer than most about the war's importance to the imperial project: “To rid the planet of one of the countries that rejected globalization and neoliberalism, privatization and multinational robbery. To establish Africom in Africa, for further penetration into the Continent, to establish the Greater Middle East from the Atlantic to the Gulf, to eliminate the Chinese and Russian competition for resources and strangle their oil- lifeline, to get the water of Africa’s richest sweet water reserve, and to teach a lesson to all those masses that genuinely produced the Arabic Spring.” In brief – “to expand capitalist dictatorship”. No wonder he no longer works at the BBC.

I don't recall reports about Gadaffi bombing people in Tripoli (I don't think he had the time). I see the filmmaker doesn't mention what was going on in Zawiya, Misrata, Ras Lanuf, Brega - unless he strictly refers to aerial bombing.

I'm not sure it's even him. The first video I saw of Muammar Qaddafi being paraded and murdered by that sub-human baying mob, I thought "yeah, that's him" (I'd throw in a LOL there, if the whole thing didn't sicken me to my stomach).

But I don't get that instant recognition from "Saif al-Islam". The guy in these videos could just be a lookalike. Maybe the Qaddafi family were a bit full of themselves, and delusional about how far Libyans would go to protect them, but that doesn't change the fact that our media has been collaborating with these "revolutionaries" (i.e puppet politicians and armed, fanatical insurrectionists that would have been labelled terrorists if they didn't have Western backing), and lying and distorting the facts from day one.

And not one of you twats judging them as "scumbags", and crowing over the mass slaughter that deposed them (at least 30,000 dead, in a country of 6 million, according to NTC figures), has turned an impoverished third-world desert into a prosperous, debt-free and relatively libertarian modern nation, not one of you has improved the lives of as many people as Muammar Qaddafi did, so fuck you and your apathetic willful ignorance. Anyone who thinks life is going to improve in Libya after this is as delusional as they come.

But I get the impression that most of you don't even give a shit. After all, these people only exist on your TV screens, right?

Right lads!Pack your bagsAnd come aboard as we hoist the Black Flag...

McFuck wrote:I try to stay out of other countries business. Doesn't mean I don't have an opinion, just I'd rather keep it to myself.

If only the same could be said of Obama, Cameron and Sarkozy. Unfortunately this WAS - literally - our business. Drones controlled from Las Vegas and depleted uranium warheads care not for opinion or nationality. If there's a profit to be gained from your death, well, say your prayers.

"The war's on, and you morons were all wrong... I call Obama a bomber 'cause those are your bombs." - Lowkey.

Right lads!Pack your bagsAnd come aboard as we hoist the Black Flag...

We can all watch propaganda videos of what went on in Libya but on the balance of probabilities and the facts I'm afraid we have all been screwed over http://youtu.be/THlaMUq6MKU

So Why are the "WEST" still sitting on our hands over the fact that Syria's president Assad is killing his own people, well simple, the oil deals are already sealed as the Royal dutch oil company has a majority share in the oil revenue which surprisingly is owned by Shell, so it wont matter how many civilians Assad kills as there is and never will be any need for regime change

Well, I'm not going to apologise, although I admit I might have gone too far. I was just despairing at the time, the lie was too blatant and the consequences too horrific. I tried to keep my sources as reliable and "mainstream" as possible, and to post all that information and then read posts like that as if I hadn't said anything or as if I was telling fibs, yes, it really pissed me off.

Oh, and US ambassadors being murdered, complete silence from the media about the wonderful new democracy flowering in Libya (I wonder why?), the country being run by various armed Islamist militias, Libya looks SO much better now. So glad that they got rid of the murdering scumbags by murdering them and anyone who supported them.

Right lads!Pack your bagsAnd come aboard as we hoist the Black Flag...

Yeah, but show me any democratic country that has not known civil war - long or short - as its foundation. I certainly did not expect democracy to flower come the next spring in Libya. About the hypocrisy of 'western' powers' involvement there but not in Syria, I agree with you. But Libyans begged for help (or were those merely puppets of the west, etc.?) once they had taken agency in rising up against Ghaddafi. Don't take that away from them.

Look at my country - the miracle transition and all that, but where is it now? The working class are finally realising that that transition was a middle-class 'revolution' and they've had fuckall of the miracle of that peaceful transition. That's almost 20 years after the transition, and the country, it seems, is getting more and more fucked and I suspect things are going to get out of hand here.

So, sooner or later. I'm glad that shit finally happened in Libya, no matter which role players are trying to fuck it up. Gaddafi was a bloodthirsty tyrant, no matter how you want to spin it.

Once again the West fuck it up, though utmost congratulations must go to O`bomba for continuing the good work that the fuckwits Bush and Blair started ... Another case of two cheeks attached by piles to one massive arse.

Liking the humanitarian heroics with O`bummer declaring we must "save the civilians" in Iraq which I guess is the least he can do after the other two cheeks murdered at least 1 million men, women and children in Iraq based on lies, Just tell the fucking truth that your arse might be a bit twitchy and a tad worried that ISIS will take over your lovely fresh oil and gas fields ... Apart from what's left of the Olive groves it`s a pity the Palestinians in Gaza have no natural resources to protect !!